The greater part of them were in a state of
evident eruption, and gave me fearfully to understand their fury and
their power, by the repeated thunders of the miscalled meteoric
stones, which now rushed upward by the balloon with a frequency more
and more appalling.
April 18th. To-day I found an enormous increase in the moon's
apparent bulk- and the evidently accelerated velocity of my descent
began to fill me with alarm. It will be remembered, that, in the
earliest stage of my speculations upon the possibility of a passage to
the moon, the existence, in its vicinity, of an atmosphere, dense in
proportion to the bulk of the planet, had entered largely into my
calculations; this too in spite of many theories to the contrary, and,
it may be added, in spite of a general disbelief in the existence of
any lunar atmosphere at all. But, in addition to what I have already
urged in regard to Encke's comet and the zodiacal light, I had been
strengthened in my opinion by certain observations of Mr. Schroeter,
of Lilienthal.
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